JOE’S DISAPPEARANCE
“You’re not afraid to be made to vanish into thin air, are you?” asked
Professor Rosello of Joe, that being part of the “patter” of this trick.
“You don’t mind being made to vanish?”
“No,” answered Joe, “not if it doesn’t hurt.” The audience laughed. Joe
was getting on surprisingly well. He had feared he would be stricken
with stage fright on this, his first appearance in public. But there was
not the least sign of it, though there was a packed house. One reason
was that, of course, the magician occupied the center of the stage most
of the time, and all eyes were focused on him. Joe had only a minor part
as yet.
But, also, there must have been something inherited by him from his
parents, who fairly lived in the public eye. Joe took to it naturally.
“You see he doesn’t mind in the least,” the professor said to the
audience. “He’ll never be missed, and if I used some boy from the
audience this might not be the case.”
“For this trick,” went on the professor, “I need a young man. I have
this—er—useless specimen——” and he tapped Joe on the shoulder. There was
more laughter from the audience. “I also need,” proceeded Professor
Rosello, “a chair, a sheet and a piece of paper. They are here,” and he
brought forward a chair, a black cloth and a sheet of a newspaper.
“There is nothing extraordinary about any of these articles except about
my young assistant. And he will feel most extraordinary when he starts
to vanish into thin air.
“The paper, as you can see, is the front page of your local publication,
_The Herald_,” and the performer held up a sheet of paper. Every one in
the audience could see that it was what it purported to be—at least on
one side, and that was the only side held up to the crowd in the Opera
House.
“This sheet of paper I will place on the stage,” went on the professor,
and he suited the action to the words. “On top of the paper I will place
this chair, on which my young assistant is going to sit,” and seemingly
without any special preparation the magician set the chair on the paper,
one leg being near each of the four corners of the sheet.
“Now if you will kindly take your seat in the chair, we shall proceed,”
said Mr. Crabb, otherwise Professor Rosello. Joe sat down, his heart
beating a little faster than usual, for he wanted the trick to work
perfectly, and much depended on him.
“Good-bye,” said the professor with mock solicitude, as he shook hands
with Joe. “This is the last we shall see of you,” and he pretended to be
distressed. Several boys in the gallery shouted their farewells to Joe
in laughing tones. He waved his hands to the audience, which was
curiously expectant.
“I will now cover my assistant, chair and all with this sheet,” said the
professor. “I do that because the disappearance of a person sometimes is
attended by painful scenes, and I do not wish to make you suffer. This
sheet was once white,” he went on, as he shook out a black cloth,
turning it about so that both sides could be seen. There was nothing
tricky about that, it was evident.
“It used to be white, but in traveling about the sheet lost its original
color, and, as I do not carry a laundress with me, it has never been
washed.”
As a matter of fact the cloth had always been black. It had to be, so
the audience could not see through it to witness the details of the
trick.
“I will now cover my assistant in the chair with this white-black
sheet,” continued Professor Rosello, “and when I raise it he will
be—gone!”
He draped the cloth over Joe’s head and shoulders, letting it fall to
the floor of the stage on all sides of the chair. He then took up his
“pistol” wand, which fired a blank shot.
“Are you ready?” he called to Joe, after a dramatic pause.
“Ready,” was the muffled reply.
“Then go!” cried the professor. He pointed his wand at the covered
chair, there was a loud report, and a moment later, when the professor
whisked the black sheet off the chair was empty. The professor lifted
the sheet of paper from under the chair. Apparently there was not a
break in it.
There was a gasp of astonishment from the crowd.
“You see,” said the professor, bowing and smiling when the applause had
subsided, “he has disappeared—vanished into thin air. I am glad it
happened to none of you, though of course I might be able to reincarnate
you again, as——”
He appeared greatly astonished at the sight of some one in the back of
the theatre.
“Why, look who’s here!” he cried, pointing with his wand. “My young
assistant has not waited for me to call him back to life. He came of
himself.”
The audience turned to behold Joe calmly walking down the middle aisle,
and up the stage by means of the temporary steps which the professor
used to descend and ascend.
There was more applause at Joe’s unexpected appearance in this fashion,
and the trick made a big hit.
And now to let you into the secret.
The trick consisted of several parts. A trap-door was in the stage
through which Joe could disappear. This trap, directly under the chair
and paper, was operated by a theatre employee, who of course would not
tell, at least beforehand, how the trick was done. After Joe had gone
down through the trap, into the room that exists under all theatrical
stages, it was an easy matter for him to slip out through the stage
door, run around an alley, and enter the front of the theatre, to walk
calmly down the aisle.
But how could he disappear through the seat of the chair, and through
the sheet of paper, without making a break, at least in the paper?
There was a trick about the paper, although it seemed to be perfectly
ordinary. It was a sheet from the local paper, but it had been prepared
in advance by the professor. On the back was pasted a square of
cardboard, a quarter of an inch smaller each way than the trap-door in
the stage. This paper trap, for such it was, was divided in the middle,
the two flaps being hinged to the sheet of newspaper. The reason the
cardboard did not show when held up to the audience was that the whole
sheet of newspaper was double, one half being folded over the cardboard
trap.
When Professor Rosello laid the paper down in the stage he was guided by
certain small marks, so that it went exactly over the trap in the floor.
This trap was hinged at the back, opening downward, but kept in place
when not in use by a strong iron bar underneath. Next he placed the
chair over the piece of paper, the legs going into exact positions
previously marked on the paper, but the marks were too small to be seen
by the audience.
The object in placing the paper on the stage was to get the audience to
believe that there was no hole in the wooden floor through which Joe
could disappear, it being the natural inference that such was the method
used. But when the crowd saw what they thought was the unbroken sheet of
paper, they would not suppose Joe had gone down through that, as he
really had.
The chair was also a trick one. The seat of it was on hidden hinges so
it could be lifted up and folded back. There were also secret springs on
it which, when released, shot out and extended certain thin steel
projections, which distended the black sheet into such shape that they
made the rough outline of a person sitting on the chair.
When Joe took his seat on the chair, under cover of the black cloth, he
pressed the secret springs, and a ring appeared above his head to
support the black cloth, exactly as if it were supported by his head.
Other projections appeared at his knees, and as the bottom of the cloth
was arranged by the professor some distance away from the legs of the
chair, Joe was as if he were under a sort of tent, held out and away
from him, so he could move about a little without being seen.
As soon as he was covered, and had worked the secret springs, he lifted
up the false seat of the chair, supporting himself by his hands on the
framework, into which the seat fitted.
This seat Joe carefully folded back, taking care to make no noise and
not to disturb the black cloth all around him. Meanwhile the professor
had with his foot given a rap on the floor of the stage. This was a
signal to the man below to open the trap in the floor.
Joe, hidden under the black cloth, felt for the opening in the floor
with his feet. A stepladder was hurriedly put into place by the
stage-hand, and Joe lowered himself down through the chair, the prepared
hole in the paper and the hole cut in the stage, to the ladder.
The ladder was quickly taken away, the stage-hand reached up and lowered
the seat of the chair back in place. Also, when this had been done he
closed the trap-door in the stage, and the newspaper with its trap was
in place above it, seemingly unbroken.
Then the professor fired the shot and whisked off the black cloth, as he
did so touching the secret springs, so that the projections snapped back
out of sight, and when the cloth was lifted off the chair looked as it
did at first, only Joe was not on it.
Then he came running down the aisle, and persons who suspected that he
had gone down through the stage did not know what to make of the piece
of newspaper. It did not fit their theory.
That paper, appeared to be an ordinary sheet, and no one, or at least
very few, would have thought of a trap being cut in that.
And thus was the “disappearing” trick worked.
“Very good! You did splendidly!” said the professor in a low voice as
Joe came up on the stage. “It went off to perfection!”
After Joe made his bow in acknowledgment of the applause he received for
his part in the trick, he prepared for the next “experiment,” as the
professor often called his acts.
That first night of Joe’s assistance went off well, a number of acts
being done after the “disappearance,” all being well received.
“A very satisfactory evening,” remarked Professor Rosello, as he and Joe
went to their boarding house, after having put away their apparatus. “I
hope we shall do as well the two remaining nights.”
“So do I,” agreed Joe.
He was very tired, for he had not rested well in the freight car, but a
good night’s sleep made him feel like a new person.